A euphemism is the substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered explicitly offensive. Jessica Mitford once said “euphemisms such as ‘slumber room’ abound in the funeral industry.” To obfuscate is to confuse or becloud.

Religious leaders told a House panel Thursday that the Obama administration was violating basic rights to religious freedom with its policies requiring religious affiliated institutions to fund birth control, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs for their members and employees.

Democrats were indignant because they had been denied the ability to present witnesses before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee who might support the government stance or speak for the rights of women to reproductive health coverage.

This isn’t even obfuscation and it’s more than an attempt to confuse. It’s an attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ears. The edict handed down from the Catholic Secretary of Health and Human Services has nothing to do with women’s reproductive health. It involves only who pays for their birth control.

No woman is deprived of contraceptives. No woman is deprived of the ability to be sterilized. No woman is deprived of the morning-after pill. They can pay for it themselves, they can get someone else to pay for it. They can get it from Planned Parenthood. They can get a 30 day supply of birth control pills from WalMart for $4. (That’s only $48 for a whole year— they get more than that back from Obama’s payroll tax extension).

House Democratic leader, former speaker, and Catholic Nancy Pelosi said Thursday morning that “I think that all institutions who cover, who give, health insurance should cover the full range of health insurance issues for women.”

Not a health insurance issue. Nor are condoms for the other sex. Nor is the toothpaste that helps prevent my tooth decay, the aspirin that assuages my headaches. With the declining birth rate, it may not even be a national good. Smaller generations of children can’t pay for the Social Security and Medicare entitlements of women.

Nobody is preventing women of childbearing age from obtaining or using birth control. We just suggest they should pay for it themselves.